The iMac Pro is now available—here’s how people are already using it

Apple’s goal with professional hardware has always been to inspire creatives and developers to produce new things. That’s not an altruistic objective; the more creative things get made on Macs, the more other creatives and developers are drawn to the platform, and the more Macs are sold. To that end, the iMac Pro is available to order today, so we spoke with Apple and several third-party developers who were introduced to us by Apple. We learned more about the iMac Pro and how people expect to use it to improve performance or add new features to their applications.

Externally, the new iMac Pro is indistinguishable from the existing iMac, apart from its darker color. But inside, it is a much more powerful machine, with CPU options up to 18 cores and up to 128GB of RAM.

It’s still not upgradeable in any significant way, apart from external GPUs. And of course, it starts at $5,000. Still, Apple has made a compelling case for the device by allowing the use cases to speak for themselves. We’ll go over the specifics about the machine and then explore some of the use cases we saw.

Specifications

Apple compares the iMac Pro’s performance favorably with that of the existing iMac, saying it’s four times faster, five times faster, or more, depending on the specific application. However, the company hasn’t said which configurations for either machine were used in the comparisons, and representatives wouldn’t provide specifics on comparative performance with the Mac Pro—they only said it would be faster.

So let’s at least get into the details of what you’ll find inside the iMac Pro. Starting with the display, you’ll get a 27-inch, 5K panel (5,120 x 2,880 pixels) with P3 wide color gamut and 500 nits of brightness. It’s an eight-bit panel that employs spatial and temporal dithering. It’s the same display as the one you may have seen on the existing iMac.

Things get more interesting when you get to the CPU. Apple went with Intel’s Xeon W and offers eight-, 10-, 14-, and 18-core configurations. Orders of the eight- and 10-core configurations will begin shipping within days, but the 14- and 18-core models won’t ship until sometime in January. In any case, it’s also worth noting that these CPUs support AVX-512 for 512-bit vector operations. Not all applications will scale linearly with added cores, and for many workflows, the 10-core model might actually be the most performant, not the 18-core. That’s because the 10-core model has the highest frequency, at 4.5GHz.

On the graphics end, it’s not quite as impressive compared to other extremely high-end dedicated workstations, but it’s solid—Radeon Pro Vega 56 and 64 with high-bandwidth memory and a new geometry engine, for 11 teraflops of 32-bit computing. Memory starts at 32GB, with optional 64GB and 128GB configurations available. There’s 1TB of flash storage to start (the Fusion Drive is gone) at 3GB/s, but it can also go up to 2TB or 4TB.

As far as I/O goes, it’s a respectable lineup. There’s none of the MacBook Pro Thunderbolt-only tomfoolery here. The iMac Pro has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, four USB 3 ports, a UHS-II SDXC card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and 10-gigabit Ethernet. The standard configuration, which goes for $4,999, comes with the 8-core CPU, 32GB of RAM, the Vega 56 with 8GB of memory, and 1TB storage.

And there’s one more thing: remember how the 2016 MacBook Pro introduced a T1 chip with security and other features related to the TouchBar? The iMac Pro contains the next iteration, which Apple calls the T2 chip. But it does more than its predecessor did. It acts as an ISP for the iMac Pro’s front-facing 1080p camera, an audio controller for its speakers and four microphones, an SSD controller, and a system management controller. It also offers some security features that I’ll get into soon.

Design

The iMac Pro’s appearance doesn’t change much from the standard iMac. It has the same display and the exact same dimensions—it’s just 0.7lbs heavier. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; few people have been complaining that the existing iMac looks bad or outdated yet.

As alluded to when discussing the specs, the I/O lineup has changed, and that is visible on the back of the computer. The most noticeable difference in the computer’s appearance is the color; like the TouchBar-equipped MacBook Pros, the iMac Pro is available in a “space gray” color, which closely matches the dark gray themes used by many pro apps, from Adobe Photoshop CC to Apple’s own Final Cut Pro X.

Accompanying this new color scheme are new, darker versions of the Apple Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad—pictured above.

Apple also plans to offer a VESA mounting kit to allow industrious owners to prop the device up on stands of their choosing, not just the standard one. This will be welcomed by some, as the existing stand is not very adjustable compared to some other monitors and all-in-ones.

Heat management is key for an all-in-one with up to 18 cores and a workstation-class GPU. Apple has employed a dual-blower solution with a large heatsink and a large fan vent on the back. The company claims 80-percent better cooling capacity than the existing iMac and also claims that, when running in a room at normal temperatures, little to no performance throttling should occur. It might throttle when running in an abnormally hot environment. Since the iMac Pro now uses only flash storage, the space previously occupied by the standard HDD has been used for heat management.

We observed one machine running numerous, CPU-intensive virtualization tasks and checked to see if it was hot. Even with all 10 cores in heavy use over several hours, the aluminum body felt no warmer to touch than room temperature. However, there was hot air coming out of the fans on the bottom of the device. We could hear the fans running in a quiet room, but it seemed comparable to the existing iMac and would usually not be audible if music or conversations were going on nearby.

IT and security

The iMac Pro runs the same macOS High Sierra software that other Macs run, with all the security features, benefits, and pitfalls we’re already familiar with. However, there is one major new security feature of note.

The previously mentioned T2 chip doesn’t just do things like image and audio processing; it offers a dedicated encryption engine for the machine’s flash storage. There is a Secure Enclave processor, which manages security keys. Additionally, Apple offers a secure boot feature in which the T2 chip validates the boot loader, the boot loader validates the firmware, the firmware validates the kernel, and the kernel validates the drivers. Apple wants end-to-end security and on-the-fly encryption, and it’s all rooted in the T2 chip without hitting the CPU. You’ll be able to turn this security on or off or use a medium setting for developer use cases.

While this new approach to security might be attractive to IT professionals, the iMac Pro doesn’t fare much better than the iMac when it comes to serviceability and upgradeability. Its memory is in full-size DIMM slots and can be upgraded by an Apple service technician, but there is no opening through which a user can access those slots. The processor is socketed, along with some other components, but the machine was not designed to be upgraded or serviced in this way.

Apple is working on a new Mac Pro for people and organizations that need a more modular approach, but we don’t have a date, pricing, or any other details about that yet. Apple’s most powerful professional computer is the iMac Pro for the immediately foreseeable future, but it comes with all the pros and cons of an all-in-one.

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